Man's survival after death

Front matter

*****

OR, THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE

IN THE LIGHT OF

Preface To The First Edition

It is my very pleasant duty to have to acknowledge my extreme indebtedness to the Society for Psychical Research for kindly permitting me to make use of their publications and to use the evidence so carefully collected and investigated by them.

To the Editor and Proprietors of The Annals of Psychical Science for kind permission to reproduce the accounts of the experiences of Professors Richet, Morselli, and Lombroso, Doctors Agazotti, Herlitzka, and Foa.

To Alfred Russel Wallace, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., for permission to make extracts from his autobiography.

To Dr Joseph Maxwell for similar kindness with reference to his valuable work, Metapsychical Phenomena. To all others to whom in the preparation of this work I am indebted for matter or information, and to Richard A. Bush, Esq., without whose encouragement this work would, in all probability, never have been published.

Charles L. Tweedale.

"]tk September 1909.

Preface To The Second Edition

My further indebtedness I hereby gratefully acknowledge to Mr E. W. Wallis, late Editor of Light, and to Mr David Gow, the present Editor, for permission to quote from the pages of their journal, and for many kindnesses received.

To Mr J. Lewis, Editor of The Psychic Gazette, for similar permission and kindness.

To Sir William Crookes, the doyen of English scientists, to whose epoch-making psychic investigations the world owes a lasting debt of gratitude, and for whom I have the profoundest admiration.

To Mr Gambier Bolton for permission to quote from his most interesting work on Materialisations. To Messrs William Rider & Son for permission to quote from Florence Marryat's There is No Death. To Mr Alfred Kitson for permission to quote from Smedley's Reminiscences. To Miss Estelle Stead for permission to quote the cases published by W. T. Stead.

To Mr James Coates, Ph.D., for permission to quote from his excellent work, Photographing the Invisible.

To Miss E. Katharine Bates for permission to quote from Seen and Unseen, and to Mrs Moore for kind permission to quote from the works of her late husband, Vice-Admiral Usborne Moore.

Finally to all those who have directly or indirectly helped me, by their testimony or otherwise, to present to the world this evidence of the things that are spiritual and eternal, I tender my best thanks.

Charles L. Tweedale.

"]th September 1918.

Contents

APTER PAGE

I. CONCERNING THE OBJECT OF THIS WORK AND

TO WHOM IT IS ADDRESSED . .II

II

In my Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. — John xiv. 2.

Then said the Angel, " End there is none that we ever heard of. Height is lost in depth unfathomable, and depth is swallowed up of height insurmountable."- — -Richter's Dream.

Along my path In front, it said, and backwards whence I came, Lie millions such as I, through endless realms Of star-strewn space.

Voices of the Suns.

IN spite of advancing knowledge certain old-world beliefs die hard, and there are still to-day vast numbers who have not cast off the old-world thought which made the earth the only sphere of material activities for sentient beings. Such ideas not only add immensely to the difficulties of a belief in spiritual existence and a future state — or where such belief is attained, dwarf the conception of that state and its possibilities — but also rob those who hold them of that wider view of God's creative energy which is their inestimable privilege. To those who are still dominated by a narrow outlook, based on ancient cosmogonies, I dedicate this chapter.

The belief almost universal in olden times, and one which was only shaken off by the minds of a few daring men, was that this earth was the " centrum," the very hub of the universe. Hence men made the sun revolve round the earth while the stars, according to Anaximines, were gold-headed nails driven into the crystaUine vault, like studs or spangles upon the ceiling of some vast room. Some such ideas as these must have filled the minds of men in the early ages of the world ever since our first parents stood in the Garden of Eden when the world was young, and gazed upon the glittering host of heaven.

These thoughts probably engaged the minds of the Babel builders on the plains of Mesopotamia, of the star worshippers in great Babylon, of the wondrous architects of the Pyramids, of the Magi in search of Him born King of the Jews, of the shepherds who watched their flocks by night, of Hipparchus and Ptolemy charting the stars and still believing that the sun moved round the earth. Only in comparatively recent times, dating from the days of Copernicus (1542), Galileo, and Kepler, has the true state of affairs become definitely known to mankind. Great intellects, ages in advance of their times, had glimmerings of the truth. . Aristarchus and Cleanthes, fifteen hundred years previously, had said that the earth revolved round the sun, and for this Cleanthes narrowly escaped impeachment and death for impiety, a fate which nearly befell Galileo in a later age.

Pythagaros, with still greater intuition, had thought of the stars as centres of activity like our sun, and called them worlds, having the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. What a daring speculation this was we in the twentieth century can now realise when we consider that in his day all the sciences were in their infancy. As to the distances of these glittering watchers of the night men could only guess.

Aratus, by a flight of imagination, probably reflected the utmost limits of speculation in his day when he says, in his Phainomena :

A brazen anvil from high heaven hurled, For thirty days and thirty nights is whirled.

But we now know that the fall of seven hundred and twenty hours, great as is the distance that would be covered, is a mere footstep on the journey in comparison with the awful reality.

What are the facts ?

It is only by a careful study of these that we can get any real idea of the nature of " Our Father's house," and of the possibilities lying before us in the future life.

A very brief study of these verities will convince us that so far from our earth being the " centrum " and " the only place," it is as a grain of sand upon the ocean's shore. Let us therefore see what the science of astronomy has to tell us in these days concerning the distance, the magnitude and the number of the stellar host which go to make up the pillars of " Our Father's house."

For ages the stars were looked upon as fixed and immovable, and until the eighteenth century the utmost skill of man had not been able to detect any change of place in these glittering bodies, but after the invention of the telescope astronomy advanced by leaps and bounds, and speedy triumphs awaited her. In the year 1718 the famous astronomer and mathematician, Halley, began to suspect that the stars were not the fixed and immovable things that men had always deemed them, but as he had only naked-eye catalogues of stars to consult, his suspicion remained merely a suspicion, and it was left for James Cassini, by the aid of telescopic determinations, to establish beyond doubt that the bright star Arcturus had moved sensibly from its place, as determined by Richter at Cayenne in 1672. The ancient idea of the fixed stars was exploded, and those glittering points, which were supposed to be eternal in their permanence, were found to be all in motion, while astronomers were brought face to face with new problems. The reason that this motion of the stars had remained unseen and unsuspected for thousands of years was simply that the displacement was so small, even after the lapse of ages, as to produce no sensible disturbance of the constellation figures, while such motion as had occurred was in most cases far less than the errors of observation inseparable from the rude quadrants and sextants of the early astronomers. Hitherto no one had been able to obtain the slightest indication of the distance of any star ;

nothing could be said of them save that their distances were apparently infinite.

Now it soon became obvious that if a body at an apparently infinite distance was found to be in motion, such motion must be appallingly great — afterwards, as in the case of the star, Groombridge, 1830, this was found to be as much as three hundred miles per second, nearly one thousand times faster than the ball from a modern rifle — and it also began to dawn upon astronomers that our own sun, itself but a star in the heavens, might also be in motion bearing the earth and all the planets with it into the unknown. In the year 1760 Tobias Mayer took up this fascinating problem and discussed the motions of eighty stars. In his memoir upon the subject he indicated the principle upon which the sun's motion through space might be detected. "It is thus," says he, " that in a forest the trees to which we are approaching seem to open out, those which we are leaving seem to close up."

In 1783 the acute mind of Herschel turned to this problem, and he soon solved it triumphantly. He found that the sun was steadily journeying through space carrying the whole attendant body of planets and satellites towards the star A Herculis.* Repeated redeterminations have shown that in spite of the imperfect instruments and data at his disposal, the commanding genius of this great man had solved the problem at the first essay. Thus the science of astronomy tells us definitely that the sun is hurtling through space towards the constellation Hercules at the rate of some 150,000,000 miles per annum, or fifteen times more quickly than a rifle ball, and three hundred times as fast as the swiftest express train. This is quite the leisurely speed of an elderly gentleman amongst the celestial host. If our sun were the star Groombridge, 1830,

* The most recent modern determination places the point towards which the sun is speeding as in Right Ascension, 17 h. 2 m. North Declination 25 .

we should travel through space eighteen thousand times more swiftly than the Scotch express. Every star is in more or less rapid motion either laterally, as detected by astronomical measurement, or directly in the line of sight, as detected by the spectroscope.*

Well may we ask ourselves : " Whence and whither are we journeying ? "

I watched the depths of darkness infinite Till dreaming, I beheld A star come forth with even gliding rush And all the mighty meaning of a Sun.

For ages upon ages has our sun been thus rushing on into the unknown. Out of the black depths to the rear and onwards, ever onwards, into the night of endless space.

Endless space ! surely there can be no such thing ? Yes, the human mind, shrink as it may, must face this awful thought. Space is without beginning and without end, even as eternity, even as the Eternal God, who is over all and above all.

A brief consideration of these facts will give the key to the changelessness of the appearance of the celestial vault during the past two thousand years. If the eye detects no change in thousands of years in the position of bodies moving with such appalling velocities, they must be plunged in the abysses of space to such awful depths that their movements, by virtue of the distance at which they are made, become as naught, and not only do the stars appear to unaided vision fixed and immovable, but have done so for ages ! f

* Among the brighter stars— Vega, Arcturus, a Cygni, a Andromeda^, and /3 Geminorum (Pollux) are rushing away from us at the rate of 49, 55, 39, 28 and 48 miles per second respectively, while Rigel, Castor, and Aldebaran are approaching at the rate of 15, 26, and 30 miles per second.

f The sun's nearest neighbours in space, the stars a Centauri, 61 Cygni, and Vega, the brilliant gem in the Constellation of the

It is when brought face to face with these things that men feel their littleness in the presence of the Eternal God. The fearful meaning of the question addressed to Job comes upon one with all the weight of an avalanche :

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? Declare, if thou hast understanding, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

And what adequate answer can the sons of men make except :

What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him ?

Man would be crushed were it not for the gracious goodness of the living God.

Then rang A voice of solemn thunder through the spheres. Say rather, what is time or space to me, that thou shouldst

deem mere mightiness of mass And plenitude of time can outweigh mind And soul ? Can worlds and Suns my power know ? Can aeons after Eeons sing my praise as man Gifted by me with power to know my power, can tell The meaning of the music of my spheres ?

Uplift thy doubting heart,

The least of all the minds my Will hath made

Outweighs a full infinity of times ;

The mightiest mere mass, the thoughts of human hearts

Outvie the movements of a million Suns

The rush of systems infinite through space.

Lyre, lie at distances of 25,475,000,000,000, 38,362,500,000,000, and 95,883,000,000,000 miles, while Canopus is plunged into the abyss to a depth of 640,000,000,000,000 (six hundred and forty millions of millions) of miles. The light of these stars travelling at the rate of nearly 200,000 miles a second takes 4-3, 6-5, and 16-27 years to cross the intervening space in the case of the first three, while the beams of Canopus only arrive on the earth after a journey of 108 years.

Therefore, ye sons of men, sursum corda, lift up your hearts, and be not dismayed.

Now it is manifest that a glittering body such as Canopus, which we know from human testimony has shone undimmed for thousands of years, and which is placed in the celestial vault at a distance of nearly six hundred and forty millions of millions of miles, must be of stupendous dimensions, in fact a mighty sun. By a careful comparison of the light of these stars with the light of the sun, it is possible to arrive at the size of those whose distance is known. Alas for those who think that our little earth is the only place and the sun the only sun ; Canopus is found to be some six thousand times larger than our sun, while the star Capella, a conspicuous object of the northern skies, is four thousand times the size of our own " glorious orb of day." So far, therefore, from our earth being the only place, " the centrum," the hub of the universe, it is found to be by comparison a mere speck revolving around a tenth-rate star.

As the result of the astonishing progress which the science of astronomy has made of recent years, we find moreover that not only is our earth not the only place, but that it is absolutely lost and swallowed up in an innumerable multitude which no man can number. The number of the stars visible to the naked eye is comparatively small, less than seven thousand, but in Herschel's time it was known that the number visible in his great four-foot reflector approached sixty millions. Lord Rosse's giant six-foot added to the number. When the eye is reinforced by the slightest optical aid, a scene of bewildering magnificence opens upon man's astonished gaze. But it is more especially bj^ photography that the richness of the universe is revealed in all its amazing splendour. There are many portions of the sky not much larger apparently than the moon's disc, and in which the naked eye can scarcely discern a single star, where the photographic eye can see and record thirty thousand glittering points, the whole background being one blazing mass. The sight of the heavens in the constellations Cygnus, Perseus, Cassiopeia, and Scorpio, through which the Milky Way passes, as viewed in a large telescope is one which invariably leaves a deep and lasting impression on the mind, the whole field of view in one gorgeous coruscation of sparkling gems, all sizes and all colours being presented to the gaze, while they are so numerous that in places they resemble a heap of glittering dust.

Here hath the Creator sown the heavens Thick as a field.

Sometimes mingled with the stellar host are mysterious filmy wisps of shining nebulosity, the primeval stuff of which the worlds are made. Careful examination of these nebulse shows them to be in various stages of condensation, and to be associated with stars and " star dust." From time to time there suddenly blazes out in the sky a new star, like that observed by Tycho Brahe in 1572, which for a brief period surpassed in brightness any star in the heavens and then gradually faded away ; or that new star in the constellation Aquila just lately observed, which equalled or surpassed Vega in brilliancy for a few days. These outbursts are proved by spectroscopic examination to be the result of the collision of two astronomical bodies (probably cold and "extinct") in the sky. The terrific force of the impact results in the gasification of the bodies, and gradually as the conflagration dies down a nebula is seen to be formed, sometimes with a small stellar nucleus. Here we probably get a glimpse of the death and rebirth of suns and worlds.

Look Nature through. All to reflourish fades ; All change, no death. Day follows night, and night The dying day. Stars rise, and set, and rise again.

When we consider that every glittering speck strewn on the blackness of the night is a body at a distance almost infinite, shining with all the mighty meaning of a sun, the sight of that host means such an awful range of creative power and actual existence as makes the mind reel and the spirit of man shrink within him. The international photographic survey plates will register nearly one hundred millions, but there are probably a thousand million suns within the reach of the most powerful photographic instruments of the day, and beyond these what ?

Along my path In front, it said, and backwards whence I came, And all around, above, below my course, Lie millions such as I, through endless realms Of star-strewn space. There is no end to God's Dominion of suns and systems ruled by Suns, No end and no beginning through all space, But everlasting, mystic, wonderful, The song of us sounds ever round the throne Of Him who reigns supreme the Life of All.

" No end and no beginning ! " Oh, awful thought and yet most true, for could we conceive a boundary, after millions of years of light journeying,* the human mind would straightway ask, what is there beyond the boundary line ? Just as space is limitless, so is duration or time, rolling on into eternity. These twain are comprehended alone of the Eternal God, which was and is and is to come.

Thus has it been reserved for science, after twenty centuries of research, to confirm completely and wonderfully the words of the Redeemer :

In my Father's house are many mansions.

* Light travels at the rate of 186,600 miles per second, or 671,760,000 per hour.

And to reveal to man the vastness of his inheritance and the infinite range of activities which, surely, lie in the beyond. There has he, if he will, an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, which never can fade away, for it is " eternal in the heavens."

Ill

OF THE WITNESS OF CHRIST TO THE REALITY AND IMMINENCE OF LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH

The Son of Man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill Him ; and after that He is killed, He shall rise again the third day. — Mark ix. 31.

There is no death. What seems so is transition ;

This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian

Whose portal we call death.

Longfellow.

TURN we first to the witness of Holy Scripture set forth in the New Testament, as of supreme interest and importance. This testimony divides itself into two parts :

1. The Testimony of Christ.

2. The Testimony of His Apostles.

First in importance comes Christ's direct statement, that men do rise from the dead, and that they have so risen in the past.

This pronouncement was made on the occasion of the questioning by the Sadducees. The reply is recorded by three of the evangelists.

Matthew xxii. 29-32 :

Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God saying,

I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Mark xii. 24-27 (vide also Luke xx. 35-38) :

And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God ?

For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage ; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

And as touching the dead, that they rise (lit., are revived) : have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ?

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living : ye therefore do greatly err.

Here we have the Christ's deliberate and careful statement on this all-important question. He tells us plainly :

Firstly, that men do rise to life again after the death of the body. " Now that the dead are raised even Moses showed you " (Luke xx. 37).

Secondly, that they have so risen in the past.

Matthew xii. 32 :

I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

The whole tenor of the words of Jesus here indicates that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were living at the time God spake to Moses.

Christ emphasises and confirms this by saying, For he is not a God of dead men, but of living men (Swvtwv). Ye do greatly err.

This is the power of the argument by which he confutes the Sadducees, and to attempt to read it in any other sense is to wilfully divert the plain meaning of words. Christ here deliberately tells the Jews that God is never a God of dead men, but always of living men, and that far from

THE WITNESS OF CHRIST 27

there being no return to conscious existence after the death of the body, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had so returned in Moses' day.

Now that this is a true statement is manifest from the fact that at the Transfiguration on the Mount there were seen Moses and Elias, who had been dead for many hundreds of years — the former from a time almost coeval with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — and these men, long since " dead," conversed with Christ concerning the events which were shortly to come to pass in Jerusalem, and were seen and heard by the chief apostles.

Let us briefly examine the question which the Sadducees put to him and the nature of the controversy.

The Pharisees believed both in angel and spirit, and in the resurrection from the dead, but their idea of the resurrection was that it would take place in the distant future. Martha (who reflected the ordinary belief of the day) indicates this when she said of her brother : " I know that he shall rise again in the last day."

The Sadducees, on the other hand, denied the existence both of angel and spirit, and utterly scouted the idea of any resurrection unto life again. This question is therefore put in the terms of the Pharisaical belief, which they are seeking to discredit — i.e. the belief in the resurrection " in the last day," and is put in the future tense. Note their words.

Matthew xxii. 28 :

Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven ?

Christ answers firstly in the tense in which it is put — i.e. in the future — and then goes on to refer to past instances of resurrection.

In these few verses Christ plainly tells the Jews that the "dead " are raised, that they had been raised in the past and would be raised in the future — a continuous process — showing them at once the twofold error of their age in supposing (i) that the dead did not return to life at all (Sadducean), (2) that men did not return to life until the last day (Pharisaic), the popular idea then prevalent, and concluding with the words :

For he is not a God of dead men, but of living men ; ye do greatly err.

It is extraordinary how men seek to explain away the gracious words of Christ, and there are those who are so enamoured of the idea of ages of insensibility lasting until " the general resurrection in the last day " that they try their best to make Christ's words mean what, in their natural setting, they never can mean.

They say that the meaning of Christ's discourse is : That God had been the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob during their mortal life, and would again be their God after the General Resurrection in the last day. But against this absurd wresting of plain language are the following statements and fact: —

1. The direct statement of God : I am the God of Abraham. Not I was, or I shall be.

2. The direct statement of Christ explaining and commenting on this, " God is not a god of dead men, but of living men."

3. The fact that Moses and Elias were seen with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration and heard talking with him as to coming events.

If they were still " dead " in oblivion, awaiting " the General Resurrection in the last day," they could not have been seen living and risen, and talking on the mount with Christ.

We now pass to the second great pronouncement of Christ as to the reality and nearness of life after bodily death, and one which was uttered under the most solemn

THE WITNESS OF CHRIST 29

circumstances conceivable. It is contained in Luke xxiii. 39-43 :

And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us.

But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation ?

And we indeed justly ; for we receive the due reward of our deeds ; but this man hath done nothing amiss.

And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.

This last verse is so important that it is best to give literal translation from the original Greek :

Kttt ewrev avTto b Irjo-ovs : And Jesus said unto him,

A/xrjv Aeyoo aot, (rr][X€pov per Of a truth I say unto thee, e/xov eo-i] ev toj irapo.8eLo-w. this very day thou shalt be

with me in Paradise.

The word Christ used on this occasion is one of peculiar significance.

Irjfxepov means this day, to-day, this present day, this very day.

These words were uttered just before the ninth hour of the day — i.e. shortly before 3 p.m. The Jewish day ended at 6 p.m., therefore Christ definitely promised the man who was dying by his side that he should live again and be with him in three or four hours.

This is the plain meaning of Christ's words, and we are to presume that Christ not only meant what he said, but knew what he meant.

It Mali scarcely be believed, but the same people who try to wrest Christ's words concerning Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have done their best to take away the blessed message to humanity conveyed by Him in this solemn hour.

They inform us that what Christ meant to say was :

" Verily I say unto thee this day, that some day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

Unfortunately for them the whole construction, sense, and meaning of the Greek is against such miserable perversion of the most solemn words of the Redeemer. The only meaning that the words can be made to bear plainly upon their face, is that the thief or malefactor should be living with Christ in Paradise before the end of the Jewish day.

Christ's bodily death occurred shortly after these words were uttered, and all Christian men are bound to believe that He and the thief were alive that very day in Paradise, or otherwise to doubt their Lord's words altogether, while nowhere are we told in Holy Writ that this almost immediate entry of the " thief " upon the future life was in anywise exceptional, or an experience differing in this respect from that which will come upon every child of man. About thirty-six hours after this event (one whole day and part of two other days) Christ was seen alive by Mary Magdalene, and continued to be seen, heard, and touched for forty days.